1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for recording and playing back data into/from a recording medium, and more particularly to a recording and playback apparatus having a function for recording and playing back digital signals of digital terrestrial broadcasting or digital satellite broadcasting, digital video cameras and the like in accordance with the capability of a recording medium.
2. Description of the Background Art
At present, the digital terrestrial broadcasting and the digital satellite broadcasting using a broadcasting satellite (BS) and a communication satellite (CS) are performed. As apparatus for recording digital signals of these digital broadcastings, recording apparatus for recording a tuned transport stream into a hard disk are put into commercial production. In such apparatus, in order to record digital signals of a digital broadcasting program, it is necessary to compare the free space of a recording medium with the amount of data of the program to be recorded and check if there is enough free space in the recording medium.
For improvement, proposed is a technique to record data (signals) with its bit rate being changed by changing the compression ratio of information from the storage capacity of the recording medium and the recording time (e.g., see Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 8-17137 (pp. 2 to 3)).
In the background-art technique, when it is intended to record a plurality of programs at the same time in an apparatus capable of recording and playing back broadcasting programs, for example, if there is enough storage capacity to record a plurality of programs in a recording medium and data is recorded into the recording medium as it is, a bit rate during the recording becomes larger. As a result, the bit rate for recording disadvantageously becomes higher than a speed at which data can be recorded in the recording medium. Further, since the speed at which data can be recorded varies depending on the recording medium to be used, if a recording bit rate is fixed, sometimes data can be recorded and other time can not.